James Byard
Stephen Xie clears his plate after a meal this month at the student eatery Bear's Den, one of the campus locations that offers composting as part of university efforts to reduce its waste sent to landfills.
Waste diversion
The university’s data indicate an overall institutional waste diversion rate of about 40 percent for fiscal year 2012, which ended in June. That breaks down as 43 percent from the Danforth Campus and 36 percent from the Medical Campus. That’s an increase from the fiscal 2011 overall rate of 34 percent.
When including construction and demolition waste, the number jumps to 68 percent for all WUSTL campuses, the Office of Sustainability reported.
WUSTL has made marked improvement in recent years. For comparison, in fiscal 2008, the overall diversion rate, including both the Danforth and Medical campuses, was 18.5 percent, so last year’s rate was more than twice as good.
The post-consumer recycling rate, which measures the success of the single-stream recycling program, also improved from four years earlier, rising from about 15 percent to 26 percent. Those successes come despite the university having a larger population and more square feet of space than it did in 2008.
However, Sustainability Director Phil Valko doesn’t want WUSTL community members getting complacent. He cautions that the recycling rate actually dropped off a bit in fiscal 2012 from the previous two years.
“We’ve made an awful lot of progress, but we still have a long way to go,” he said.
In addition, an audit of waste at Bear’s Den last fall indicated the vast majority of items in the landfill container actually could be recycled or composted, so there’s room for improvement. For example, Valko said, after student volunteers re-sorted materials deposited in the various bins, they determined that while people deposited 60 pounds into the landfill bin, in reality only 6 pounds belonged there.
The message he wants WUSTL community members to take away is: when in doubt, recycle. Sorting systems at the back end are better than they used to be, he said, and most things are recyclable.
To reduce its reliance on landfills, WUSTL has expanded composting sites on campus, adding pilot sites last fall at the Brown School, the School of Law and the Millbrook (Facilities) Building.
Last semester, the university collected more than 14,000 pounds of compost at the pilot sites. That figure excludes Dining Services locations, which collectively gather about 50,000 pounds of compost each semester.
The university diverted 81.5 percent of construction and demolition waste from landfills -- more than 26 million pounds -- in fiscal 2012, the office reported. One example of a success story is finding new homes for 1 million pounds of artificial turf removed from Francis Field. (See previous Record story).
Other examples are steel beams taken to a recycling company, which melts them down to make other steel products; leftover concrete broken up and used as gravel for roads; and lumber getting chipped to become landscaping mulch.
Recyclemania
WUSTL also is again participating in the Recyclemania competition, in which colleges and universities across the U.S. and Canada compete to see which can keep the most waste out of landfills during an eight-week period, measured by weight, per capita and in other ways.
This year’s competition began Feb. 3 and runs through March 30.
Last year, the university finished the contest in the top 10 percent in the Gorilla category, which awards schools that recycle the greatest overall amount of recyclable materials. WUSTL ranked No. 23 out of 296 schools, recycling about 278.6 tons.
This year, with five weeks’ worth of results recorded, WUSTL ranks No. 20 out of 346, which is again in the top 10 percent.
Valko said for this year, he’s simply hoping to improve on previous performances, but wants to set a more precise benchmark and step up education efforts around campus for the 2014 competition.
Energy conservation
The university also has added to its ranks in utility operations in recent months, bringing on senior engineers at both the Danforth and Medical campuses, new positions that can focus on smarter energy use in WUSTL buildings.
Mechanical engineer Brian Winschel is at the Danforth Campus, and energy engineer Kevin Harding is at the Medical Campus.
Ed Barry, director of utility operations at the Danforth Campus, said Winschel is helping with general oversight and upkeep of the operation, but also is working on projects such as installing meters across campus so utilities staff can gain a better sense of which buildings use the most energy and target reduction efforts accordingly. Such efforts could range from simple things like reminding employees to turn off lights when leaving a room to updates such as occupancy sensors or installation of new heating and cooling systems during building renovations.
“This is more of a reinforcement of what we’ve been doing all along, and being able to devote more manpower to it,” Barry said.
Winschel also has been involved with plans for solar panel installation at the Delmar Loop retail and student apartment development under construction.
Harding, meanwhile, is working on ways to make air flow more efficient in medical buildings and to shut down labs not in use for an extended time to save energy and lower utility costs. Shuttering unused labs could save up to $400,000 a year in energy costs, explained Jim Stueber, director of facilities engineering for the School of Medicine.
Harding also is helping oversee energy meters’ installation and oversight, as Winschel is on the Danforth Campus.
Harding is charged with finding opportunities to conserve energy, managing energy meters and training technicians so they’re up to speed on best practices in energy conservation.
All these efforts, Stueber said, are in response to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton’s sustainability plan and challenge.